


asterism

by Reishiin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen, Zexal NYE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 08:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5736547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Durbe saw. (Canon divergence after the events of ep109)</p>
            </blockquote>





	asterism

**Author's Note:**

> ZexalNYE gift for [numeronnetwork](http://numeronnetwork.tumblr.com), who requested past Barians. Happy new year, numeronnetwork!
> 
> Scene three is based on [this fanart](http://shiningdraw.tumblr.com/post/53579936959) (Durbe + Mizael)

 

 

 

 

**-198**

They find Merag's corpse eventually, following the report of a fisherman who had discovered the emblem of the princess's headdress among his day's catch. When they return her body to the shore, Durbe sees that her flowing skirts are stained with salt and seaweed, her body ragged at the edges with decay. Once, Merag had been celebrated by all the United Lands. Her elegance and beauty that had been loved so well— they have all been taken from her now, like her strength and her kindness. But even like this, Durbe loves her still. He thinks he always will.

They carry out her funeral rites over a closed casket. Nasch says that the people must not see what happened to her. They must remember her not as she is, but as she used to be.

It's sensible, and it's strategic, and it chills Durbe to the core. He comprehends Nasch's words and the logic behind them but he does not _understand_. Nasch is not above using people but he does not exploit them as means to an end, and Merag was his sister, advisor, confidante, closest friend. Merag was—

—Nasch's hands are trembling. His posture is ramrod straight, his chin tilted in an impression of arrogance but which Durbe has come to recognise as false bravado. It all comes together in a picture that reads, _Don't you dare say anything_.

"My king," he says, to acknowledge that unspoken message. _My friend_ , is what he means.

If Nasch is to hold the kingdom together then he must be strong even when he cannot be. Even now the court is silent around them both, still waiting for the next instructions of their king. The war is not yet over, and the Mad Prince's ultimatum still hangs in the air, cold and sharp like Merag's ice. Durbe knows without a doubt that Nasch will go to meet that challenge. He is just afraid of what the outcome will bring.

 

 

 

 

**-105**

Durbe returns from the Mad King's War; he is the only one who does. On that long road back from the borderlands, that is the only thing that makes him keep on—that he must bring the news of the final battle back to the King of the United Lands. On the way, he hears tell from the survivors that Nasch has won the confrontation, that Vector is dead and the Forsaken Kingdom lies in ruins.

Immediately on return to the capital city, he requests an audience with the king. He gives his account of what happened during that final battle, and Nasch listens to all of it with his head slightly bowed, so that his hair falls over his face in a way so that obscures his eyes.

—I apologise, Durbe says at the end. That I did not do better. That I could not save them. _That I lived, when no one else—_

Nasch finally looks up then. " _No_ ," he says emphatically, in a voice strained with an emotion Durbe cannot place. "Please, never—" Then he tells Durbe of what transpired.

 

The castle halls seem suffused with a sort of darkness, after that. The weight of the losses suffered against the Mad Prince still lie heavily on them all, and the sombre atmosphere of mourning lingers long after the funerary rites and processions have concluded. Nasch is quieter, and even though he still carries out all his responsibilities and holds court as if nothing has changed, his expression is weary, and the shadows grow dark under his eyes. It's the same everywhere— there is a silence throughout the United Lands where voices and laughter once had been.

They're going over court documents one afternoon when Nasch drops the pen, and Durbe picks it up from where it fell, and when he passes it back their hands don't even touch but Nasch flinches like he's been burned.

"—My king?"

"I'm sorry," Nasch says, looking at him with that same unreadable expression, and Durbe gets the feeling that it's not distraction Nasch is apologising for. Recently. Durbe can't shake the feeling that he's being handled like glass. It's the same way Nasch used to talk to Iris— like she was something precious and breakable.

Nowadays it always seems like there are a lot of things Nasch wants to say, but he never says any of them. Nasch has always fought his monsters on his own. Nasch is someone who has always believed in his own will and his own strength, and ironically, it is precisely that belief which led all of them here to this moment in this place.

Durbe thinks that even though the Mad Prince is dead, perhaps he is the one who truly won this war after all.

 

 

After that the advisors and the courtiers turn against Nasch, one by one, and weakened and alone as the king is, he cannot defend himself. They force Nasch to abdicate— he was too young when he took the throne, they say, and clearly he has not been able to withstand making difficult decisions in the conflict with the Forsaken Kingdom. Durbe protests the motion with everything he has, but since he is foreign-born and does not hold any official position in the court, his words hold no weight at all.

— Once, these people had been friends, who pledged their loyalty sincerely to the United Lands and would instantly lay down their lives in its defense. But perhaps the conflict with the Forsaken Kingdom has tested their faith. It's not strange that that sort of sea-change can shake even the most steadfast of hearts.

But also. There is something strange about the darkness that diffuses through the palace halls, and sometimes it looks like there are black shadows behind the courtiers' eyes. Sometimes they stare down at their hands or blink and shake their heads like they're not sure what just happened. It can't mean anything, can it?

Several days later they find Nasch conveniently dead in his rooms with his own sword through his throat. Regrettable, they say. But dynastic change is an inevitable process in the lifetimes of kingdoms, and despite the _tragedy_ , the United Lands must go on.

Durbe hunts down the culprit, makes sure he goes the same way Nasch had gone. It's vicious, for someone like him who has never shed blood unless necessary, and as he departs the scene of the event he senses that something has been irretrievably lost. But he remembers that sea-change can shake even the most steadfast of hearts, and he thinks he no longer trusts this world to be just.

The throne to the United Lands is given to a distant cousin, someone weak-willed who will serve as puppet for the shadow powers in the court. Durbe stays long enough to see the transition through, as a matter of ceremony, and then takes a leave of absence on the pretext of returning home to assist in the rebuilding efforts. There is no longer any reason that he should stay in the United Lands.

He leaves the capital city with only Mach by his side. The way the sky looks, clear and grey — it isn't very unlike that day when he returned here with the news of the pyrrhic victory.

 

 

 

 

**-11**

Two days into the badlands, seeking shelter for the night behind an outcrop of rock. Durbe finds someone, light-haired and garbed in foreign raiments, curled up in a pool of blood beside the unmoving body of a large dragon. If he sustained those injuries in the Mad King's war, Durbe is surprised that he lived this long.

Mach folds up tired wings and legs and tries to snuggle up to the dragon for warmth, but finds none. At this the stranger opens his eyes, and for a moment he seems to focus on Durbe, who's pushed the hood of his travelling cloak away from his face while trying to settle the pegasus. "You too, then?" the stranger says, in a voice wracked from pain.

Durbe doesn't know what the stranger is talking about so he just nods. Checks on the condition of the man's injuries; there are arrows embedded into vital regions, old blood soaking through his tunic and wetting the ends of his sun-bright hair. He's too far gone for Durbe to be able to do anything, so the latter just stays, and listens to the stranger's accented half-sentences without really understanding. His name is Mizael, and his dragon is dead. And something about a village, and a shaman, and a flood.

The sky is clear tonight, the stars bright points against a dark backdrop. Mizael looks up into its vastness and says, _I was foolish to believe that offering my life would change anything_. It is very like a sentiment that Durbe has never been able to put into words and which has weighed on his mind since he returned to the United Lands that day. Even though he still does not know what happened to the dragon tamer, he recognises it as the sense of having been somehow betrayed.

That day, when he met Merag and Nasch on the bridge over the sea, and became their friend. They all had believed in very different things then— that they would always be able to live as they were, and change the outcomes of things with their own hands. Since then, the world has become a very different place. Or perhaps it has always been this way, and they were all simply too blind to see it.

He stays with Mizael until the latter no longer draws breath, and then gives him the simple funeral rites befitting a knight. Belatedly, he realises he does not even know if Mizael's homeland would have tolerated something like that.

 

 

 

 

**-3**

Durbe returns home, and senses that the other knights look at him with different eyes now. They, too, are different than he remembers: more selfish and more conceited. Perhaps they have always been this way, and he simply did not see it before. Or perhaps he himself is the one who has changed. Even so, he tries to speak with them as he did previously, about those things they all used to believe in: about justice, and the bonds between people that become the strength of them all.

At first, they laugh. Then their faces grow cold like the steel of their drawn swords.

They wonder, in voices deliberately loud enough to carry, how Durbe survived the Mad King's war. They wonder whether he'd hung back from the frontlines of the attack, whether he'd abused his position as commander to send others to their deaths to protect his own life.

They say, someone like that isn't fit to be called a knight.  
They say, someone like that isn't welcome here.  
They say, someone like that shouldn't be allowed to live. Not when everyone else has died.

Durbe tries to tell the truth of what happened. But he quickly realises that they will not listen. To them, it looks only as if he's trying to defend himself.

So he doesn't defend himself, either with his words or with his sword. He could fight back, and despite the odds, perhaps he could even win. But he doesn't even try any more.

Those knights, who had once been closest friends— as they leave him, he considers the rivulets of red that run over his gauntlets and seep into the thin sleeves of his tunic. It is always difficult to get blood out of fabric once it has had time to set. But this time he won't have to. Mach nuzzles his side. That, too, will be the last time.

Above him, the sky is still the same. The stars are looking over all the horrors of this world, and they are doing nothing. Just as they did nothing when Merag fell, or when the Mad Prince carried out his massacre.  That day, Mizael had said that it was foolish to believe. All this time Durbe has only lived to protect and serve to the best of his ability. But he could not save these people who had once been friends, just as he could not save the comrades who died in that place fighting the Mad King. He could not help Nasch, as he could not help Merag.

Everything he believes in no longer exists, or maybe it has never existed at all. That hatred floods him blackly, like death. It will be the last and only thing he knows as he passes into the next world, and strangely, he can find nothing wrong with that.

 

 

 

 

**0**

In the other world the sixth of seven stars rises into the sky, and watching the upward arc of its ascent, the darkness smiles.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
